Academy The Usual
by Joel182
Summary: Academy is a wrestling high school with a multitude of stories to tell. The ninth follows a girl on her discovering not what she is but who she is. Stephanie POV Stephanie/Layla. SLASH WARNING!


**DISCLAIMER: I OWN ABSOLUTELY NOTHING EXCEPT THE PLOT. ALL RIGHTS TO WWE. Please enjoy :D**

* * *

Ever since I was born I can't remember ever wanting something. Actually, it's more like I never got the chance to want, because as soon I became even the slightest bit aware of my desire to have something, my father (who believed me to be him in every way but gender) always made sure it was there waiting at my feet when I turned around.

One such example was dolls. Dolls. I had a million of them. However, I hated them all. To me they were just plastic pieces of empty space that smiled moronically at everything I did - no matter how evil.

Like what I did to Shane.

To be honest, I don't know why I did what I did that day - even now I can poorly classify it as childish boredom - but for some reason, to my eight year old mind, the act had to be done. I had to tell everyone at the Junior Academy what I saw. I had to start streetwide cruel rumors based on the truth. I had to stand by and watch him get beaten down by a pack of wolves who held the same ideal I held. The same ideal my father held.

That this world should be purged of the incorrect. Of homosexuals.

I told my dolls what I had done. I looked each of them in their multi-coloured eyes and whispered in a venomous hiss "I watched my brother die today". My dolls looked back at me - not with the hate-filled eyes my father had while he tried to cover up the reason for the attack on his son, nor with the distant gaze of a mother who was sensing that her time here was winding down - with a dull look of plastic joy. They seemed to say "that's amazing Stephanie" "you're so cool Stephanie" "I love you Stephanie" as if it were the truth, and on that day I bought into their subserviance. I hated them all. Shane had been their saviour countless times when he'd come into the room and scold me for ripping them apart, taking care to mend them back together. Some he gave to better homes. Others he took the time to bury. In time, I hated Shane. And so I watched him die that night. I stood over his body and stared into his eyes, watching as his soul escaped. I smiled that night. I had won this war. I had quietly killed the great messiah. But, his court of free slaves did not seemed saddened by his death. Instead they looked to me - their overlord - and smiled in twisted glee, welcoming my unchallenged reign.

I learned, after Shane became a human vegetable, the value of people. People are like my dolls. They have no choice but to obey the strong.

None stayed close to that truth more than a girl named Layla.

* * *

Her name was Layla El. She was a transfer student fresh off an English boat. We had all just gotten settled into our second year of the Academy High School, with me at the helm as the well-known Queen Bitch. I was the billion dollar princess whom no one could touch. I had real-life dolls surrounding every second of the day, with smiles pasted on their faces at all times. Not one person in the entire school dared to displease me in the slightest.

If I said jump, everyone just jumped.

Layla came along as the second year of school dwindled away to the summer. The first to strike us all - as our teacher introudced her to us - was her height. She was maximum five feet. The next to catch most eyes was her gorgeous body. It was well-rounded (as opposed to my rail thin figure) with curves in all the right places. In short, Layla had a body that made everyone question her age. No fifteen year old girl in this school looked like Layla. However, all questions where silenced the moment she raised her head to smile at us. Instantly, everyone started calling her an English Muffin.

I called her a Peach Tart, because I hated peaches.

* * *

The dying semsester crawled out to greet the shore of summer. By then I had lost all interest in my plastic friends and so I instructed them to disband and never return to my sight again. Once the new school year rolled in, I had gathered a new set of dolls. I pranced around the school with them, showing them off like trophies won. Eveyone envied me. Everyone hated me.

Everyone but Layla.

For the longest while her actions baffled me. She was neither afraid, nor intimidated. In fact she was perfect. She just stood in her corner and never got invovled. In just a few short months, thanks somehow in part to a girl named Michelle McCool (a friend Layla seemed to always be around...not that I cared or anything, it was jut a fact too hard to miss) , Layla went from a hot topic to a mere ghost in our school. Just a short girl with a pretty face who you've probably bumped into but never once realized. It did not take long for people to lose interest in her presence, and once again become swallowed by their own petty lives.

I was the exception to that, as my interest in McCool's toy seemed to grow never-endingly. She was a recluse in the eyes of many, but to me, that wasn't the entirety of it all. Despite having not known anything about her, to me, Layla's attachment to the lifestyle of an introvert disturbingly mirrored my reaction to hearing of my brother's death. It looked practiced, forced and only there to please the ideals of another.

Looking back at it now, that should have been the moment that saw me acting upon a burning want to ditch my barbies and start...well..._something_ with the little English girl who reeked of the one thing I truly wanted. Freedom. But the longer I watched her try to blend in with her surroundings, the sooner I came to realize the danger of having thoughts - thoughts like running away from what I had to be - and in no time at all, I hastily returned to the comfort of my moronic dolls. /That was close/, is what I had thought the moment I turned my back on what my mind was trying to conjure up.

A life outside my father's shadow. A life with Layla El.

I shuddered to think about the consequences I would have faced had I gone and become an 'incorrect' like my brother. There was bound to be another eight year old me out there somewhere who thought it best to set a trap and watch me become a tragic victim of a hate crime. In the end, I concluded that Layla was a dangerous being. I had to stay away from her at all costs.

It wasn't hard because as soon as our third year ended, Layla El was gone.

* * *

Being Daddy's little girl and only heir had it's perks. I went comfortably to the College that stemmed from Academy's veins simply because my father owned both schools. I took topics that would prep me for a certain future of schematics and brutal talks of business, and even did a music lesson on the side to present myself as something multi-skilled. During High School I was the girl who wore the shortest and tightest of anything and everything. In College, my father insited that I become - finally become - the son he never had. Even when Shane was alive, our father never once believed that he was his. As far as Vincent Kennedy McMahon was concerned, he had a son named Stephanie. She just needed a few wrinkles ironed out.

For the five years I stood in College, I quickly became the son my father loved by shedding the daughter he never truly wanted.

* * *

During my time there I met an interesting man. His name was Hunter Helmsley, and the reason he was so interesting was simply because he was so determined to be the new Headmaster of the Academy, but whenever he was asked why, he would look away for a moment (over his right shoulder like someone was standing there) and then tell anyone who asked:

_"It's just a dream."_

Intrigued and geninuely attracted to his marvellous asthetics, I dug my claws into Hunter. It wasn't hard to slip into his overall overbearing persence because, one, my father was just so, and two, Hunter wasn't my first. I knew men like I knew my face, and in no time at all, I had grabbed onto Hunter's achellies heel - his dream - and twisted his rebellious attitude into something as refined as granulated sugar. Soon he became my newest doll. Never opposing. Never provoking. Always obedient. That's what my boyfriend-turned-husband had become. And it was everything I expected paradise to be...

...then came the night I saw Shane's face in my sleep-his gaunt and dying face. Everything changed after that.

* * *

It had been two weeks since I first came to this place.

It was just a little bar outside of the ever-busy city of New York. It was an odd place for a bar to be if you ask me, but like most patrons, I had simply stumbled upon it when the walls of my life came crashing down. Out of nowhere, this little hearth had appeared like a beaming lighthouse on the stormy shores of an uncharted life I once thought I held in my complete control.

Hunter - like we wanted - became the successor to my father's empire. Daddy didn't seem too happy to be dismissed, but age had withered his mind to a point where creativity was completely out of the question. It was inevitable that Hunter took over. And I stood triumphantly at his side as we oversaw all the new dolls we had come to acquire in such a short period of time. Three months in our sexless marriage, I knew that something was dreadfully wrong. Incorrect is what I was told to call it, but wrong just the same.

"It wasn't like I didn't have my doubts" I spoke softly with eyes on the bar counter "it was just that I had hoped I was wrong." Forbidden tears puddled on the grease-stained counter. "I wanted to be wrong."

A glass hits the space ahead of me. I bring my eyes to it - studying it as though it were a forigen creature- and watched as a polished liquid (the same colour as fine champange) dove head first into the sturdy material, stopping just shy of the brim.

"Here." A voice speaks soothingly from someplace far away. The combination of being drunk on tears and drunk on too much fine wine made it impossible for me to dechiper where it was I had heard this voice before . "Drink up Princess."

/English?/ I thought - slightly convincing myself of the utter impossiblity of it all - before deciding to drag my heavy head upwards and drop my gaze to the person behind the glass.

There was no mistaking it. A life built on the importance of commiting to memory names and faces had turned me into something other worldly when it came to having the ease to recollect. So, I knew, without a doubt, that she was_ her_.

That she was Layla El.

* * *

Two weeks ago I did something. What that something is I cannot truly - nor fully - explain. I blame the wine for that. The french have a way of making it so that memory is sorely impaired. Or was it Italian? I can't recall. However, none of that excuses me for what I did two weeks ago when my life had come to an extreme halt. Doubt is a powerful drug that only serves to amlify all the nerves of the body. Once amplified, alcohol - or rather the excessive intake of alcohol - numbs every strand of nerve that doubt had forcefully woken up. After that, conscience loses its mighty grip, and the rest is like a shot of vodka - swift, but quickly followed up by another.

Layla El had become my shot of vodka.

Having been forced out of my car due to the excessive heat, I took refugee in the small, misplaced bar. In the daylight - and through much clearer eyes - I am able to take in this strange haven. The front entrance looks much like a worn-out Western saloon with it's grilled double doors that creaked loudly when opened, down to it's very porch complete with chair used by no one and everyone all at the same time. Once inside, some bits of the twenty first century creep through in the form of the stainless steel machinery and the old town feel of the bar area. The two sets of tables and chairs behind me are simply there to give an illusion of a resturant. The very fact that they looked battered and forgotten should be enough to convince even the blind that they are merely here for astethic purposes. Much like Hunter when I think about it. Over all though, this little bar does have it's charm. Once inside, all I can feel is what most people would describe as homey. And loved.

"Hi." Greets a woman I haven't seen since High School. I stare at her for a moment - having been brought out of my pervious observations - and take in the sight of her unchanged body tucked away neatly in a pair of purple boxer panties and a white tank top that hangs loosely over her braless breasts. With a mane of short brown hair wetted to the tips compling over the sleek outlines of her face, Layla looks completly and utterly irresistable.

I remind myself that this is not what I came here for. Two hours inside my car was not spent to think about things like..._that. _

"Hi." I manage to finally spew out, wondering simultaneously why I didn't say hello instead. Hi invites causal, and casual invites what happened two weeks ago. I should have said hello. "Hello."

Layla pauses behind the counter and gives me a small smile. "Ello" She speaks mockingly in her rich English accent.

I bregrudingly admit that my analysis of her was wrong. She wasn't a Peach Tart. She was a tart. Either way though, I gather the necessary nerve to face the mistake head on. "I just wanted to-"

"Order." We look at each other - me with confusion and she with some warped understanding - before she turns quickly to the small fridge behind her. Once there, she bends - knees straight - to search the tiny storage unit. My eyes glue to the sight of...everything...until I physcially have to slap my own face to stop it and turn away.

After what feels like eternity, Layla removes her wonderfully cut butocks from my line of sight and motions for me to get closer to the bar. I hesitate at first, but soon decide to treat this like a business deal that needs to see a positive end. With the skin of my father, I take the offered stool and try my very best to kick aside the image of Layla from two weeks ago.

"What will it be Princess?"

I frown a bit, knowning full well that the nickname doesn't piss me off (it shouldn't seeing that it was I who had invented it in the first place) but rather the fact that this little tart has said it. And everything she says seems filled with bile coated heavily in the deciving taste of liquid sweet.

"Nothing." I state frankly. "I just came to talk to you."

"Oh?" She asks while presenting to the conversation a small, chunky glass. "What's the topic?"

I lean back a bit from the counter to offer up some room to breathe. I hadn't drunk at all since that night, so why was I feeling so light headed? Quickly, my brain concludes that it is the fault of this place. This homey feeling is toxic. I'll have to speak quickly if I hope to survive. "Don't play coy Layla. I did something terrible, and I feel that I should be the bigger man and come out and apologize for my actions."

For a moment she stares at me, and then smiles with a chuckle. "But we're not men."

Instinctively, I feel like agreeing with her and joining in on the fun she seemed to be having, but I was raised the correct way. And the correct was to keep a situation, as tentative as this, serious. "You don't seem to understand Layla. I am a married woman with the world as her oyster. I am rich and important. And most importantly, I'm straight. I like men." That wasn't entirely true. I liked the idea of men. The idea of becoming, in some way, one of them. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't until two weeks ago that I actually fell in love with the very simple fact that I am a woman.

I would rather die than admit that.

"I cannot be allowed to be seen as anything shy of those aformenentioned things." I harden my stare. "So I am asking you nicely to accept my apology and put our indiscretion aside. Forever. If you don't, I am afraid that I will have no choice but to put you under the microscope of legal scrutiny"

She pauses for a moment, before silently reaching back into the fridge and pulling out a small, near-empty bottle of apple juice. With a blank face, she pours the juice into the waiting glass and has us both watch the last drop exit the bottle. I stare at her a bit unhinged - rattled by a conscience that strongly believes that I had no right to say what I just said -while trying desperately to hold steadfast to the stance my father taught to me.

"Here." She pushes the glass of juice closer to me until it braces against my resting hand. "Drink up Princess."

For some reason, I don't aruge against it (concluding that the reason was simply me not seeing a reason to wage a war over an offered glass of harmless apple juice), and take in the liquid like a parched man. One drink is all it takes for this place to work its majic. Immediately I start smiling again - slightly, but it's there - and soon feel comfortable sitting atop this rusty stool in my thousand dollar Armani suit.

"Good isn't it?" She asks now leaned over the counter top. I give a curt nod in reply. It was good. It's apple juice. "Would you like something better though?"

The tinge of nervousness that had wrapped me in a tight clutch back in the car came back with a vengence and stapled me to the stool. Forced into a feeling of needing to reply, I did with the softest and most unsure "Yes" I had ever heard escape my mouth.

As soon as the word flew out of my mouth, Layla inched forward and tore my lips away into the currents of a passionate kiss. I returned the favor -determined to best her actions - momentarily, before common sense rang back into my vacant mind. It reminded me that I was kissing a girl. Instantly, I stopped responding to Layla, and so she pulled away with a cheeky smile splashed across her face.

Despite the return of my senses, I found it extremely hard to lie to myself in that moment. Just by looking at Layla I knew like I knew what my husband was. Like I knew what Shane was becoming. I knew I wanted more. Not just a kiss. Not just a forgotten night. I wanted it all, and I wanted it all from her.

"It's called the usual."

I blinked into conciousness to comprehend what Layla was trying to say. "The usual?"

"Yeah. My special treat." She smiled brightly. "Anytime you'd like it, just come on by and order up, okay Princess?"

No. It wasn't okay. I wasn't planning to come back here. Ever. I am a married woman, who's rich and self-made. Layla El was going to destroy me. Destroy my father. Destroy everything I had worked to have as my own. This was not okay in the least.

"Sure."

And just like that, I found a will to step a little outside my father's shadow and into the sunlight above.

Just like that, I ordered the usual.


End file.
